The government has once again criticised Kyiv over its preparations for winter. Klitschko has been given a deadline to come up with solutions
Oleksiy Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for Ukraine’s Recovery and Minister for Community and Territorial Development, held a meeting with Klitschko.
“Kyiv’s pace of preparation for the heating season does not match either the level of threat or the scale of state funding. Next winter is not ‘sometime in the future’. There are seven months left until then,” he wrote.
Kuleba emphasised that the state is already committing significant financial resources to protecting and securing Kyiv’s heating supply systems. In particular, the government:
- has allocated 987 million hryvnias for priority protection measures;
- is preparing a further 967 million hryvnias for the advance purchase of distributed heat generation equipment;
- separately earmarked a further 2 billion hryvnias for the protection of critical infrastructure and the commissioning of additional heating capacity.
“In total, during April and May, this amounts to almost 4 billion hryvnias of state funds. These are taxpayers’ resources and the resources of a country at war. And this is despite the fact that the capital has the largest budget after the state budget,” Kuleba stated.
He called on the Kyiv authorities to “move immediately from discussions to concrete action”: signing contracts, selecting contractors, preparing sites, connecting to networks and launching backup generation.
The Deputy Prime Minister stated that Kyiv must provide contracted solutions with clear deadlines, a funding schedule and personally accountable individuals.
“Monitoring of implementation, including the signing of contracts, is due by 10 May. After 10 May — in the event of failure to meet the set targets — it will be necessary to assess the capital’s leadership’s ability to prepare for challenges, given that they have all the resources to do so,” Kuleba wrote.
What Klitschko says
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko stated that the capital continues to prepare for the coming winter, whilst the government, he claims, is “washing its hands of the matter”.
“We are doing everything within the city’s power. The central government, however, despite publicly declaring that it would help, has no intention of doing so. The Ministry of Community and Territorial Development promised state funding and even proposed contractors for the restoration work at TPP-5. Now that time has passed, the state is, in effect, washing its hands of the matter. The ministry has stated that this is solely Kyiv’s responsibility. In other words, it’s politics again. They are trying to corner Kyiv,” he said.
Klitschko stated that “in this situation we are being put in”, Kyiv urgently needs to find a further 3 billion hryvnias. In total, around 9 billion hryvnias are required to purchase equipment and create a backup heating supply system for CHPP-5.
“The capital, however, continues to implement projects both to restore facilities damaged by the enemy and to build a backup heat supply system. Within the limits of the funds available to the city and using funds borrowed from partners,” Klitschko wrote.
As a reminder, the Cabinet of Ministers has previously clarified the mechanism for co-financing projects under the Resilience Plans and is accelerating preparations for the next heating season.
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